Monk Heirlooms

09Apr

With the beta invites being sent out by the hundreds of thousands and the expansion drawing ever closer to going live, I think it’s time to start getting plans for heirlooms in motion.

I know a lot of people will not want to use heirlooms on their monks, especially since the class and expansion are going to be brand new, but I also know that there are a lot of people who really don’t like the leveling process at all who are going to make use of every heirloom they can get their hands on. And you can’t forget the twinks, of course.

This guide is written for those of you who do want to use heirlooms on your Monks, and would like a little direction in which purchases to make, and which enchants to use on them if you feel like maximizing your leveling potential.

As you continue reading, please keep in mind that this guide is aimed strictly at showing you which heirlooms are you best option among the heirloom gear; I am not necessarily saying that you should use these heirlooms exclusively and ignore all other gear. For example, I would never use the Dread Pirate Ring unless I really wanted to level a character quickly because it offers only secondary stats and an experience bonus. I would much rather use rings that provide a bonus to my primary stats that I know I’m going to use. As a guide that covers heirlooms though, I’m going over every slot for which heirlooms exist to say, “if you’re going to use an heirloom in this slot, then this is the one you want.”NOTE: At this time Blizzard is planning to remove Head enchants from the game once MoP goes live (or more likely, the patch right before it goes live). I am going to leave them listed in the guide for now because (A) they haven’t actually been removed yet and (B) it’s still in beta so it is possible, however unlikely, that they will revert the change and add them back in.

Heirlooms in Mists of Pandaria
As far as we are aware at this point, there have been no new changes to heirlooms in the upcoming expansion. The items still have the same level restrictions, the same item level limits that prevent using upgraded enchants, a quick scroll through the list looks like they all give the same bonuses to the same stats, and there is still no way of getting heirlooms from one server to another without paying for a character transfer.

There has also been no change to the methods of farming for your heirlooms, so you’ll still need to pick your chosen method(s) of farming for Justice Points, Honor, Champion Seals, Darkmoon Artifacts, and gold along with guild reputation.

The fastest method of farming that I’ve found so far has definitely been Honor farming. Doing random BG’s at least until you score a victory, hitting Tol Borad every chance you get, doing Wintergrasp weeklies, and so on can really get those Honor points flowing. The PvE heirlooms are almost without exception better than the PvP heirlooms, but you can convert your Honor to Justice Points and still earn those heirlooms faster than if you had just farmed the JP itself. Running a few random dungeons can speed up that process too, of course, but if you’re going to pick and single method and stick with it then Honor is the key for me.

A Quick and Dirty Look at the Monk Class
Monks are the new class coming in Mists of Pandaria (MoP), which are very mechanically similar to Druids in many ways. Monk talent trees allow them to fill three of the four roles: tank, heals, and melee DPS.

Two of the Monk talent trees utilize Agility as their primary stat, very similar to the Druid’s feral forms. The third tree, healing, utilizes Intellect as their primary stat, similar to the Druid’s Moonkin and Restoration specs. Monks also have another resource called Chi, but gear has no impact on Chi so I will not discuss it in this article.

The only real difference in heirloom choices between the two classes at all is in which weapons they are able to equip. Monks have a pretty limited selection of weapons to chose from, but they also have the advantage of being able to dual wield in all three specs. According to the Monk overview on battle.net, the Monk can use the following weapons: Fist, one-handed Axe, one-handed Mace, one-handed Sword, Staff, Polearm. Of those weapons, there are no fist or polearm heirlooms and the restriction of only being able to use one-handed versions of most of the melee weapons as well as no access to Daggers means that some of the better Agility-based heirlooms are off limits. Lucky for the Mistweaver healing spec, Monks do have access to staves which means they’ll be flying high with one of the strongest heirloom weapons available.

Brewmaster (Tank) and Windwalker (Melee DPS)
Both of these specs use Agility as their primary stat, so many of our gear choices will be very simple. At this point in time I am not in the MoP beta yet, so my knowledge of the class comes only from what I’ve been able to read online. Once I am able to see more about how each of these specs work I will be able to revise this list, if necessary, to adjust some item slots if a secondary stat priority makes one weapon (for example) significantly better than another.

As far as the armor pieces go, there’s no question those are the ones that you want. Since Monks are limited to only cloth and leather armor, you want the leather pieces that have Agility (not that you have a choice).

Weaponsgive you a little bit of wiggle room because there are two options for you to choose from. The only reason I went with a Sacred Charge and a Mace is because I found no indication in my research that Monks gain any particular benefit from Haste. The Sacred Charge has a higher Crit bonus because it has no other secondary stat, so I would lean towards using one from a min/max perspective. The values of the secondary stats are low enough that you’ll be perfectly fine dual-wielding Maces if you would rather do that. [UPDATE] With the addition of the Burnished Warden Staff, it does actually give you better stats overall than dual wielding. I would have to double-check the attack skills of both melee specs to see if there is any specific reason to dual wield rather than go with the two-handed staff, but from a stats standpoint the staff is the clear winner. Now, be aware that if you follow that link to Wowhead you’ll see that the staff shows significantly higher stats on Wowhead than it does in the game.

The only reason I’m suggesting Haste trinkets is because you would get no benefit at all from the Intellect trinkets and their mana restoration, which is your only other option for heirlooms.

Mistweaver (Healing)
The Monk is a leather wearing class, so leather armor is the way you should go in my opinion. If you have the cloth heirlooms and want to use those then feel free to do so. The major difference between the leather set and the cloth set is that leather pieces have Spirit on them while cloth pieces have Haste. While looking over the Mistweaver’s healing spells, I didn’t see any particular need for Haste where as the changes to intellect and mana pools has only increased the importance of Spirit for mana regeneration.

The staff beats out the one handed options at every level. You can occasionally get higher stats for a level or two when you combine a one-handed BoA caster mace with an off-hand item, but the staff will top the combination again within a few levels until you get near to not using the 1-80 heirlooms any more anyway. Even though you can dual wield as a Monk healer, the off-hand weapons that have caster stats on them suck.

Enchanting Your Monk Heirlooms
I know a lot of people feel that using heirlooms in the first place already makes the leveling process too easy or too fast, but I play to level and I treat my leveling game the same way other people treat their end game. That means I like to maximize my performance at all times and in every way that I can, which includes enchanting my heirlooms with the best enchants available.

For those slots that I give multiple options for enchanting I have listed the enchants in the order that I would suggest them. As this guide is directed at leveling, I’m going to put my focus on leveling and not PvP twinking. What this means is, I’m going to lean heavily towards enchants that will benefit you through the entire leveling process as much as possible. If you are looking at this list for your twinks then you shouldn’t necessarily assume that it’s the best enchant for a PvP twink. If you have questions about enchanting heirlooms for your twinks, leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to help.

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

Ferocity is the clear winner here as there isn’t an Agility enchant available for you. Outcast is a decent option, though it’s not spectacular since Strength is only half as good as Agility at best, and the Intellect doesn’t do anything for you in either of these specs.

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

Stealth is by far your best option thanks to the change it received in the Shattering making it what it is today. Superior Defense is a great enchant when you’re at a low level, but the higher you go the less important it becomes, so from a leveling perspective I’d even take +3 Agility over +70 Armor.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Vengeance in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

If you’re a Brewmaster Tank, then you’ll want to look at the last 3 for your tanking stats.

While an extra 100 health is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting 10 health for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

[UPDATE]With the new heirloom staff being introduced, the +25 Agility enchant is where it’s at. Everything else in the weapons section will still apply beyond that point. You certainly don’t want to settle for +15 Agility if you can get your hands on +25, but you can use the +15 just fine if that’s the best you can find. For the long term, I would say the +Agility enchants are where it’s at end the end game so you might as well use them from level 1 on.[/UPDATE]

Since Monks can dual wield, you’ll most likely want to use two +15 Agility enchants on your weapons. I haven’t found a good article covering the stat changes in MoP yet, so I’m not 100% sure if Monks will benefit at all from Strength or not. Since I’m not sure, I’m going to assume that things remain as they are for now, and I’ll revise this portion later if I find out differently.

My personal preference for Monks will be to use the Agility enchants over Crusader, or possibly to use one of each enchant with Crusader on the main hand weapon for more chances to proc its effect.

This ring enchant requires a reputation grind to purchase the pattern for it, requires you to be an Enchanter to activate it, and requires character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list this one since it has the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

It’s up to you whether you would rather enchant more for DPS (Arcanum of Power) or Healing (Arcanum of Renewal). If you’re concerned with mana regen, you’ll want to go with Renewal. Otherwise, go Power for stronger heals and a Hit bonus.

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

If you’re wondering where the caster enchants are for cloaks, welcome to the club. Your best choices are professions-specific and will give you no benefit until you’re in your 60’s at the earliest. If you’re a solo player or like to level in PvP, then Stealth and Superior Defense are your best options because they’ll add some survivability. If you prefer to stay in groups then Subtlety is a decent option to help reduce your threat, though it’s largely unnecessary. My personal preference is Stealth, though I do have Subtlety on one of mine and a +5 to All Resistances on another. There just isn’t a good caster option outside of professions.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Discipline in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

While an extra 100 health or mana is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting health and spell power for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

With the changes to mana in MoP, maybe the +100 Mana enchant will become a big deal, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

In the current live patch Mighty Intellect is the superior enchant, but once MoP launches that’s going to change because Intellect will no longer increase your mana pool. There are only two things that will keep the +22 Int enchant on this list once MoP launches. First, it’s easier to find people that have +22 Int versus those with +30 SP not to mention it’s a cheaper enchant materials-wise. Second, Intellect still increases spell crit in MoP (as far as I’m aware), so you do get at least something besides just 22 SP vs. 30 SP out of the deal. Even with the spell crit factored in though, diminishing returns on spell crit will make the +22 Int enchant less and less effective every time you gain a level.

These ring enchants require reputation grinds to purchase the patterns for, they both require you to be an Enchanter to activate them, and they both require character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list these two since they have the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

46 responses to “Monk Heirlooms”

I’ve been looking around for these companion max affection bonuses, so MUCH LOVE from me. Mr. Robot on the other hand, is giving you a Bro-hug instead of mucho amore. (He’s a little hurt… he thought you were friends, but then he saw you link to gear on Torhead. Don’t tell him I told you, but it made him cry a little…)

Supposedly an agility staff heirloom is coming for Monk tanking. It’s a shame Monks can’t just use 2h maces. That 2h mace heirloom *SHOULD* have been a staff anyway so Hunters could have used it, but that’ll be moot in Mists as Hunters will only have a ranged weapon that counts for stats.

Also, the advice for shoulder and head enchants for Monks looks like it might be unnecessary since Blizzard is removing them, with the exception of Inscription having a Scribe-only shoulder enchant.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for confirmed changes and so far I haven’t seen much beyond the head/shoulder enchants being removed. Since it’s not 100% guaranteed to make it into live I’m going to leave it as it is for the time being and once we get confirmation on the other stuff then I will update this post as well as the 4.3 post that covers all of the classes.

I just saw something about Inscription and they’ll be making shoulder enchants for others, yet theirs will be far superior being their profession stat bonus. I didn’t see anything about lower level ones though. FYI, your level 64 shoulder enchant information helped me; thanks for that.

Slightly of-topic but what other stuff would you grind for a monk? I’m hearing the Tundra mammoth might go account wide so that would be pretty cool, or maybe one of those Argent tournie pets might be useful.

I haven’t seen a list of which pets/mounts will not go account wide, so I’m still under the impression that all of them will. I know they aren’t going to let you use the Argent Squire pets (the little kids) be used in pet battles, but that’s the only kind of restriction I’ve heard of. So if that’s the case, then grinding any kind of pet or mount that would have otherwise been considered too expensive or too much effort to get before will probably be a good idea now that they’re going to be bound to your account.

I know it’s a bit off topic but I read somewhere that using heirlooms excludes you from servers first achievement, even though I’m quite sure that’s not the case. Do you/does anyone know anything about that?

Heirlooms make getting to 77 quite easy, which only matters for the new race. At 77 its better to swap many out for Cata Greens, if available. Then the extra 25% to 85 is nice as well. I’d say they help cut off more than just a few hours on the trek to 85.

Although nothing beats RAF. A tank/dps+disc team, with heirlooms properly enchanted, can easily 2man the vanilla dungeons. I think the optimal team would be ProtWar+Disc for this task, but I could be wrong.

What are your thoughts on the Burnished Wardens Staff (agi, stam, crit, haste) coming in 5.0? Would it be comperable to two one handers assuming it was enchanted with 25 agi? http://mop.wowhead.com/item=79131

I’m under the impression that the BWS is still unconfirmed, correct? If it has been confirmed, then the BWS is going to absolutely kick the crap out of the two one-handers from level 3 through 80.

One thing to keep in mind in terms of enchants is that a slower weapon, which the BWS is, is going to have a higher chance per attack to proc its effects. In the long term +25 Agility is probably going to be your best bet, but you could make very good use of both Crusader and Life Stealing because of the weapon’s 3.60 speed as well.

So, that being the case I’m going to say that the BWS is still definitely the superior weapon, but not nearly as fantastic as Wowhead made it out to be when I looked earlier. According to Wowhead, the BWS has +207 Agi, +311 Sta, +138 Crit, +138 Haste. So if Beta proves true, then yeah it’s still superior, but if Wowhead is right then this staff is beyond ridiculously over powered.

Also, the staff doesn’t technically start to overpower the dual wielding (based on the beta stats) until your teens rather than level 3+ if we assume that you’re going with straight +Agility enchants. If you use anything else, then the staff takes over somewhere between levels 5-10.

Remember: Archaeology has some pretty sweet one-handed axes from the Vrykuls which can be enchanted with a greater enchant than the leveling weapons. I farmed two and put berserking on both, which I am then going to use when I hit 71, making my leveling maces useless for the remainder of leveling. There’s also the orc helmet but seeing as you’d lose 10 % exp, it’s deffo not worth it.
I know this thread focuses on heirlooms but just thought I’d mention it.

Further research into mailboxes finds that while there were mailboxes in the beta in the beginning, they have since been removed. Blue posts since that time have indicated that first mailbox access will be after completing the starting zone and choosing a faction at about level 10.

That explains both the heirlooms being availible to some characters that sitll had them from early beta, and you not finding a mailbox yet. It also makes sense from the standpoint of not allowing the creation of “go between” characters that one could use to transfer goods between factions.

Odds are good that they will not be able to join guilds until they have made the decision. I don’t have anything firm on that, but it seems to follow the logic they are using.

Wondering if you’ve reconsidered the weapon enchant for leveling Mistweavers (through dungeons)? Since Intelligence and Spirit are going to translate to Hit and Attack Power for Melee Healing (which with heirloom items will be serious), is the enchant +22 Intel on the heirloom staff not the best choice?

Aldor and Scryer have different shoulder enchants, so if you want the other faction’s then you’ll have to regrind your reputation or get an alt to start fresh. Farming with a level 80+ character I got the reputation I needed on two separate servers in three evenings. You can do it in about 20 minutes if there are enough rep items for sale on the AH or sitting in your gbank, though.

Burning Crusade was one of those times where Blizzard actually believed in making your choices matter, so Aldor vs. Scryer actually meant something more than whether you get a pet/mount of one color or another. I found the enchants from the Aldor to be the better ones in general, but I still wanted one or two from the Scryer so I have one character exalted with each on my two main servers. That lets me go for whichever enchant I find most appealing at any given time.

Not unless they suddenly decide that Hit is important for leveling. It helps, sure, but Hit has always been a stat that you could completely ignore during the leveling process and still do just fine. I don’t see MoP changing that.

Hey good lookin out with the post here most was pretty much what I thought it should be. I do wonder why the melee monks (tank/dps) arent just using 2 x venerable mass of mcgowan. Also I see most of these comments were back in August I can say for sure the staff is BIS (that balanced warden staff or w/e it is called). Anyhow thanks again for the nice write up!

I mentioned my reasoning for going sword/mace rather than dual mace in the article, though either pairing will work just fine. Haste from the maces versus higher crit on the sword is the only difference and there’s really not enough of either stat even at level 80 for it to make any significant difference one way or another.

Since the staff made it into the recent patch rather than waiting until MoP, I do need to get the post itself updated to reflect that.

+25 Agi is the clear winner for enchants. The only other ones that I would possibly consider would be Crusader or Life Stealing, but both of those would perform well at early levels and then get significantly less effective the higher level. If I had crafting mats running out my ears (which I do) then I might consider rolling with Life Stealing until somewhere around Outlands, and then upgrade to 25 Agi from there on, but you will be perfectly fine rocking 25 Agi the entire time.